MoonFall Read Free Page A

Sally and Todd huddled together in their blankets, not arguing or fighting, but clinging to each other with fierce protectiveness.
    Noah remembered Jeb and Pete again, remembered the way he’d clung to them when things went bad, and how on the worst off all mornings that had left him soaked through with their blood.
    He smoked a cigarette.

    The next day the group moved on, but the atmosphere was different. Half-Skull stood on top of the bus as it rumbled along, watching the people around him as much as he watched the road ahead. Heads were lowered, shoulders slumped. The group had always seemed like a fragile band, undernourished and riddled with disease, half of them hobbling or blighted by sores and hacking coughs. But Noah had never seen them so downtrodden.
    Watching them no longer lifted his spirits. And yet he could not help following, drawn along by some terrible compulsion. Did he want to keep seeing people, or did he just want to know what would happen next? He asked Bourne, but his holstered companion remained silent.
    Their next stop was a junction where the highway met another road running east to west. An old gas station seemed to be the reason for the stop. Half-Skull set people to work retrieving any dregs of fuel still remaining in its tanks. Noah figured it for a lost cause. They weren’t far enough into the wilds for such a place not to have been thoroughly ransacked, but he watched with the same hollow, edgy feeling he’d watched everything else since Tyrone’s death.
    Tyrone had seemed like a good man, as much as such people still existed. Half-Skull wasn’t. He and his allies prowled the camp, most of them carrying muskets, while the others worked. If they were meant to be guarding against outside dangers, then they were looking the wrong way. It crossed Noah’s mind that was to his advantage, as they might not have viewed him with friendly eyes. The thought didn’t reassure him none.
    He was watching Sally and Todd cook the company’s dinner, their usual arguments reduced to whispers, when a scream echoed through the camp. His hand went straight for Bourne, his eyes and everybody else’s following the sound to the darkness at the edge of the camp.
    Half-Skull had a handful of Mary the wheelbarrow wrangler’s red hair. He yanked her head to one side as he pushed her against a wagon and wrenched up her skirts. She screamed and battered futilely against his chest, her face contorted in horrified panic. Half-Skull’s fist collided with the side of her face, leaving a trickle of blood in its wake, then he turned his glare on the rest of the camp.
    Sally stood but was pulled back down by Todd. Everyone else turned away except for Half-Skull’s gang, several of whom were grinning with approval at their leader.
    Mary’s screams turned to sobs as Half-Skull tore her dress entirely away.
    Noah turned away, too. His hand wrapped around Bourne’s handle, gripping so tightly his fingers went cold. Bourne who was empty of bullets, unlike those muskets in the camp. Bourne, who made him feel so powerful in his idle moments, now left him impotent in the face of depravity. But, then, he didn’t know the woman. She didn’t even know he existed. Why would he risk anything for her when her own people wouldn’t?
    His stomach tightened. These people sickened him, just like most did in the end. Better to be alone than constantly reminded of what humanity really was.
    He picked up his pack, drew deeper into the shelter of the trees, and started walking east.

C HAPTER T HREE

    D UMPSVILLE

    A FEW DAYS later Noah found the town of Dumpsville lying an hour’s trek north of the highway. For the first time in a month, he thought he might finally scavenge some decent supplies. The journey east so far had been bitterly disappointing – a few empty houses and a burned-down gas station, and only one rabbit in his snares. Even the local mushrooms had an unhealthy purple color that no sane man would put in his mouth.